Urgent 'stay away' warning as vomiting and diarrhoea bug hits Midlands hospital

Patients have been warned to stay away from the A&E department of a Midlands hospital after it was hit by a highly-contagious vomiting and diarrhoea bug. Bosses at University Hospitals of North Midlands declared a critical incident earlier this week, which was later found to be down to a gastroenteritis outbreak

The announcement covers both Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital, Stafford. Dr Steve Fawcett, clinical director of urgent care in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, said some areas were under 'severe pressure' after the alarm was raised on Tuesday, November 26.

He urged those who had planned to visit the emergency department to go to pharmacies instead. Dr Fawcett said: "While the NHS is absolutely there to treat the ill and people who need hospital treatment, what we really need is to try and give the hospitals some space to deal with those sick patients."

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The incident means longer delays than usual are expected while the sickest patients are prioritised, Mirror reports. Dr Fawcett added: "We’ve got infection in the hospital with things like gastroenteritis, which is closing down some of our bed capacity... and causing problems with flow of patients through the system - back into their own homes."

A 'significant number of beds' are believed to be 'out of action' across three wards, with the infection control team waiting for the all-clear. Dr Fawcett said staff face extra pressures every winter but there had been a recent surge which had left a number of wards out of use.

He said: "It won’t be all the beds, necessarily, on those wards that are affected, but there are a significant number of beds that have been taken out of action because we have to wait for a specific time period for the infection control team to give it the all-clear, for them to be re-used. The whole system is busy, everyone’s working really hard, and it just aggravates it when you’ve got other issues that contribute to the pressure."

Parts of the hospital system are understood to be facing long wait times and ambulance delays. Critical incidents typically last a few days, with the situation reviewed on an hourly basis.

A briefing to NHS workers was issued by Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board, according to StokeonTrentLive. It said: "All services across primary, secondary and community care are continuing to see a high level of demand, especially relating to hospital admissions, putting additional pressure on services and significant strain on our workforce.

"Ambulance services are also under pressure, and this may have an impact on waiting times. Due to the current demand for urgent and emergency care, for both physical and mental health services, system executives across the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICS have made the decision to declare an NHS System Critical Incident.

"This helps all providers to take additional measures to maintain safe services for our patients and those in the community waiting for an ambulance. Partners across the system are working together to mitigate the challenges and explore all avenues that would support admission avoidance and timely discharge.

"During this time the emergency departments will continue to see the sickest patients first, which means, for some patients, there may be much longer delays than usual. We are therefore asking the public to help us by only using A&E in a serious or life-threatening emergency.

"When we’re discharging patients, we ask that their friends or loved ones pick them up from hospital as soon as possible and have everything they need at home."